Visits and Sketches at Home and Abroad with Tales and Miscellanies Now First Collected Volume I Part 8

"I grow old," said he, looking from his work to the bust of the late queen which stood opposite. "I have carved the effigies of three generations of poets, and as many of princes. Twenty years ago I was at work on the tomb of the Duke of Oldenburg, and now I am at work upon _her's_ who gave me that order. All die away: soon I shall be left alone. Of my early friends none remain but Goethe. I shall die before him, and perhaps he will write my epitaph." He spoke with a smile, not foreseeing that he would be the survivor.

Three years afterwards[17] I again paid Dannecker a visit, but a change had come over him: his feeble, trembling hand could no longer grasp the mallet, or guide the chisel; his eyes were dim; his fine benevolent countenance wore a childish, vacant smile, now and then crossed by a gleam of awakened memory or thought--and yet he seemed so perfectly happy! He walked backwards and forwards, from his Christ to his bust of Schiller, with an unwearied self-complacency, in which there was something mournful, and yet delightful. While I sat looking at the magnificent head of Schiller, the original of the multifarious casts and copies which are dispersed through all Germany, he sat down beside me, and taking my hands between his own, which trembled with age and nervous emotion, he began to speak of his friend. "Nous etions amis des l'enfance; aussi j'y ai travaille avec amour, avec douleur--on ne peut pas plus faire." He then went on--"When Schiller came to Louisberg, he sent to tell me that he was very ill--that he should not live very long, and that he wished me to execute his bust. It was the first wish of my own heart. I went immediately. When I entered the house, I found a lady sitting on the _canape_--it was Schiller's wife, and I did not know her; but she knew me. She said, 'Ah! you are Dannecker!--Schiller expects you;'--then she ran into the next room, where Schiller was lying down on a couch, and in a moment after he came in, exclaiming as he entered, 'Where is he? where is Dannecker?' That was the moment--the expression I caught--you see it here--the head raised, the countenance full of inspiration, and affection, and bright hope! I told him that to keep up this expression he must have some of his best friends to converse with him while I took the model, for I could not talk and work too. O if I could but remember what glorious things then fell from those lips!

Sometimes I stopped in my work--I could not go on--I could only listen."

And here the old man wept; then suddenly changing his mood, he said--"But I must cut off that long hair; he never wore it so; it is not in the fas.h.i.+on, you know!" I begged him for heaven's sake not to touch it; he then, with a sad smile, turned up the sleeve of his coat and showed me his wrist, swelled with the continual use of his implements--"You see I _cannot_!" And I could not help wis.h.i.+ng at the moment, that while his mind was thus enfeebled, no transient return of physical strength might enable him to put his wild threat in execution. What a n.o.ble bequest to posterity is the effigy of a great man, when executed in such a spirit as this of Schiller! I a.s.sure you I could not look at it, without feeling my heart "overflow in silent wors.h.i.+p" of moral and intellectual power, till the deification of great men in the old times appeared to me rather religion than idolatry. I have been affected in the same manner by the busts of Goethe, Scott, Homer, Milton, Howard, Newton;--never by the painted portraits of the same men, however perfect in resemblance and admirable in execution.

MEDON.

Painting gives us the material, sculpture the abstract, ethical aspect of the man. In the bust, whatever is common-place, familiar, and actual, is thrown out or kept down: in a picture it is not only retained, but, in most cases, it is necessarily obtrusive. Goethe, in a blue coat and metal b.u.t.tons, and a white neckcloth, would not recall the author of the "Iphigenia;" still less does that wrinkled, decrepit-looking face, in the gallery at Hardwicke, portray Boyle, the philosopher.

ALDA.

Dannecker told me that he first modelled the head of Schiller the exact size of life, and conscientiously rendered each, even the slightest, individual trait; yet this head appeared to every one smaller than nature, and to himself almost _mesquin_.[18] He was in despair. He repeated the bust in a colossal size; and the development of the intellectual organization, on a larger scale, immediately gave what was wanting:--it appeared to the eye or to the mind's eye as only the size of life. He showed me a beautiful ba.s.so-relievo of the Muse of Tragedy, listening with an inspired look to the revelations of the Muse of History. This admirable little group struck me the more, because long ago I had clothed nearly the same idea in imperfect words.

I took leave of Dannecker with emotion: I shall never see him again!

But he is one of those who cannot die; to use his own expression--"Quand on a fait _comme cela_, on reste sur la terre." When Canova, then a melancholy invalid, paid him a visit, he was so struck by the child-like simplicity, the pure unworldly nature, the genuine goodness, and lively happy temperament of the German sculptor, that he gave him the surname of _il Beato_; and if the epithet _blessed_ can, with propriety, be bestowed on any mortal, it is on him whose long life has been one of labour and of love; who has left behind him lasting memorials of his genius; who has never profaned the talents which G.o.d has given him to any unworthy purpose:--but in the midst of all the beautiful and exciting influences of poetry and art, has kept from youth to age a soul serene, a conscience and a life pure in the sight of G.o.d and man. Such was our own Flaxman--such is Dannecker!

MEDON.

Who are now the princ.i.p.al sculptors in Germany?

ALDA.

Rauch, of Berlin; Christian Frederic Tieck, the brother of the celebrated poet and critic, Ludwig Tieck; and Schwanthaler, of Munich.

Rauch is the court sculptor of Berlin. He has, like Dannecker,[19] his professors.h.i.+p, his order of merit,[20] and, I believe, one or two places under the government, besides constant employment in his art. He works _by the piece_, as the labourers say. But though he too has yoked his genius to the car of power and patronage, he has done great things. The statue of the late queen of Prussia is reckoned his _chef-d'oeuvre_, and is not, perhaps, exceeded in modern sculpture. It was conceived and worked out in all the inspiration of love and grief; as Dannecker would say, "Mit Lieb und Schmerzen." He had been attached to the queen's personal service, and shared, in an intense degree, the enthusiastic, devoted affection with which all her subjects regarded that beautiful and amiable woman. This statue he executed at Carrara; and a living eagle, which had been taken captive among the Appenines, was the original of that magnificent eagle he has placed at her feet:--nothing, you see, like going at once to nature! In the course of twenty-five years Rauch has executed sixty-nine busts, of which twenty are colossal.

Among his numerous other works, designed or executed within the same time, there is the colossal statue of Blucher, now at Breslau; this is in bronze, upon a granite pedestal. There is another statue of Blucher at Berlin, of which the pedestal, rich with bas-reliefs, is also in bronze. Rauch has been employed for the last twenty years in modelling field-marshals and generals, and has devoted his best powers to vanquish the difficulties presented by monotonous faces, drilled figures, military uniforms, and regimental boots and b.u.t.tons; and all that man _can_ do, I am told he has done. I have seen some of his busts, which are quite admirable. At Peterstein, near Munich, I saw his statue of a little girl, about ten years old, which, in its simplicity, truth, and elegance, reminded me of Chantrey's Lady Louisa Russell, though in conception and _manner_ as distinct as possible. The full length of Goethe, in his dressing-gown, of which there is such an infinitude of casts and copies throughout Germany, is also by Rauch.

Christian Tieck is the old and intimate friend of Rauch. They live, or did live, under the same roof, and it is not known that a moment of jealousy or rivals.h.i.+p ever disturbed the union between these two celebrated and gifted men, who, starting nearly at the same time,[21]

have run their brilliant career together in the self-same path, and, whatever judgment the world or posterity may form of their comparative merits, seem determined to enter the temple of immortality hand in hand.

Tieck's works are dispersed from one end of Germany to the other. His statue of Neckar; his busts of Madame de Stael, of her second husband Rocca, of the Duke and d.u.c.h.ess de Broglie, and of A. W. Schlegel, I have seen; and all, particularly the busts of Rocca and Schlegel are exceedingly fine. At Munich, at Dresden, and at Weimar, I saw many of his works; and at Manheim the bust of Madame de Heygendorf,[22] full of beauty, and life, and expression. At Berlin, Tieck has been employed for many years in designing and executing the sculptured ornaments of the new theatre. There is a colossal Apollo; a Pegasus, striking the fountain of Helicon from the rock, colossal Muses, and a variety of other heathen perpetrations--all (as I am a.s.sured) exceedingly fine in their way. I believe his seated statue of Iffland (the Garrick of Germany) is considered one of his _chef-d'oeuvres_. He also, like Rauch, has been much employed in modelling generals and trophies, in memory of the late war.

Schwanthaler, the son of a statuary of Munich, is still a young man; his works first began to create a sensation in Germany in the year 1823.

In spirit and fire, and creative talent, in a fine cla.s.sic feeling for his art, he appeared to me to be treading in the steps of Flaxman, and like _him_, he is a profound and accomplished scholar, who has sought inspiration at the very fountain of Greek poetry. His ba.s.so-relievo of the battle of the s.h.i.+ps in the Iliad, his games of Greece, his designs from the Theogony of Hesiod, and a variety of other works which I have seen, appeared to me full of imagination, and in a pure and vigorous style of art. Of him, and some other sculptors, you will find more particulars in the note-book I kept at Munich; we will look over it together one of these days.

MEDON.

Thank you; but I must needs ask you a question. In the works you have enumerated, nothing has struck me as new, or in a new spirit, except perhaps the Christ of Dannecker, and the statue of the queen of Prussia.

Now, why should not sculpture have its Gothic (or romantic) school, as well as its antique, or cla.s.sical school?

ALDA.

And has it not?

MEDON.

If you allude to the sculpture of the middle ages, _that_ has not become a school of art, like their architecture and their painting: yet can it be true that there is something in our modern inst.i.tutions, our northern descent, our christian faith, inimical to the spirit of sculpture?--and, while poetry in every other form is regenerate around us, that in sculpture alone we are doomed to imitate, never to create?--doomed to the servile reproduction of the same ideas? that this alone, of all the fine arts, is to belong to some peculiar mode of existence, some peculiar mode of thinking, feeling, and believing? "Qui me delivrera des Grecs et des Remains?"--who will deliver me from G.o.ds and G.o.ddesses, and from all these

"Repet.i.tions, wearisome of sense, Where soul is dead, and feeling hath no place?"

ALDA.

You are little better than a heretic in these matters. But I will admit thus much--that the cla.s.sical and mythological sculpture of our modern artists, is to the ancient marbles, what Racine's tragedies are to those of Sophocles; that we are so far condemned to the "repet.i.tion wearisome of _forms_," from which the ancient spirit has evaporated; but that is not the fault of the subjects, but of the manner of treating them, for never can the beautiful mythology of ancient Greece, which has woven itself into our earliest dreams of poetry, become a "creed out-worn."

Its forms, and its symbols, and its imagery, have mingled with every branch of art, and become a universal language. It is the deification of the material world; and therefore, that art, which in its perfection may be called the apotheosis of form, finds there its proper region and element.

MEDON.

You do not suppose that, with all my Gothic tastes, I am such a Goth as not to feel the truth of what you say? But I am an enemy to the exclusive in every thing; and--pardon me--your wors.h.i.+p of the Elgin marbles and the Niobe, is, I think, a little too exclusive. All I ask is, that modern sculpture should be allowed, like painting and poetry, to have its romantic, as well as its cla.s.sical school.

ALDA.

It has been otherwise decided.

MEDON.

But it has not been otherwise proved. There has been much theoretical eloquence and criticism expended on the subject, but I deny that the experiment has been fairly and practically brought before us. I know very well you are ready with a thousand instances of attempt and failure, but may we not seek the cause in the mistaken application of certain cla.s.sical, or, I should say, pedantic ideas on the subject? If I ask for Milton's Satan, standing like a tower in his spiritual might, his thunder-scarred brow wreathed with the diadem of h.e.l.l, why am I to be presented with an Athlete, or an Achilles? Why would Canova give us for the head of Dante's Beatrice that of a muse, or an Aspasia? and for Petrarch's Laura, a mere _tete de nymphe_? I contend that to apply the forms suggested by the modern poetry demands a different spirit from that of cla.s.sic art. How to apply or modify the example bequeathed to us by the great masters of old, Flaxman has shown us in his Dante. And why should we not have in sculpture a Lear as well as a Laoc.o.o.n? a Constance as well as a Niobe? a Gismunda as well as a Cleopatra?----

ALDA.

Or a Tam o'Shanter as well as a laughing Faun?

MEDON.

When I am serious and poetical, which is not often, I will not allow you to be perverse and ironical!

ALDA.

See, here is a pa.s.sage which I have just found among Mrs. Austin's beautiful specimens of translation: "The critic of art ought to keep in view, not only the capabilities, but the proper objects of art. Not all that art can accomplish ought she to attempt. It is from this cause alone, and because we have lost sight of these principles, that art among us has become more extensive and difficult, and less effective and perfect."[23]

MEDON.

Very well,--and very true:--but who shall bring a rule and compa.s.s to measure the capabilities of art, and define its proper objects? May there not exist in the depths or heights of philosophy and art, truths yet to be revealed, as there are stars in heaven, whose light has not yet reached the naked eye? and why should not criticism have its telescope for truth, as well as its microscope for error? Art may be finite; but who shall fix its limits, and say, "thus far shalt thou go?"

There are those who regard the distant as the unattainable, the unknown as the unexisting, the actual as the necessary;--are you one of such, O you of little faith! For my own part, I look forward to a new era in sculpture. I believe that the purely natural and the purely ideal are _one_, and susceptible of forms and modifications as yet untried. For Nature, the infinite, sits within her tabernacle, not made by human hands, and Genius and Love are the cherubim, to whom it is permitted to look into her unveiled eyes, and reflect their light; Art is the priestess of her divine mysteries, and Criticism, the door-keeper of her temple, should be Ja.n.u.s-headed, looking forward as well as backward.

Reason estimates what has been done; Imagination alone divines what _may_ be done. But I am losing myself in these reveries. To attempt something new,--perfectly new in style and conception--and spend, like Dannecker, eight years in working out that conception--and then perhaps eight years more waiting for a purchaser, and this in a country where one must eat and pay taxes--truly, it is not easy.

SKETCHES OF ART, LITERATURE, AND CHARACTER.

III.

MEDON.

You have been frowning and musing in your chair for the last half-hour, with your fore-finger between the leaves of your book--where were your thoughts?